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cecilselwyn 's review for:
Final Crisis
by Grant Morrison
original review (because Goodreads doesn't let you review things twice???): comics are literally everything i am a comic girl first and foremost from now on
and that statement is truer than ever!! i've spent like a year just brushing up on all the context possible to fully understand Morrison's DC saga and this is its fulcrum point...my favorite piece of...art...ever...honest to fucking god...like, a religious experience in every sense that conveys and something i always read in one unbroken sitting, a trance state...and while i STILL don't fully understand every aspect of its brilliant construction, every single choice made and detail provided, i'm about as close as i feel i ever need to get...god comics are so fucking amazing
so...in short...what Morrison and company do here is nothing short of monumental, as a statement not just on the endurance of pop culture as meme but on the fundamental nature of fiction itself and its knotty relation to our reality...it's maybe the most vital work on the magic of serialization...and it's why these characters will never be fully captured outside of their original medium...there's simply too long a history to draw from and too much power to live up to in that cumulative effect Grant taps into here
Final Crisis is a web of time loops, taking advantage of the 4D nature of "sequential" art to make it exceedingly apparent that nothing ever ends and that is why evil will never win...what the fuck is the threat of entropy to a series of events drawn on endlessly on copied paper??...what the fuck is the bomb to Superman???...the greatest stories we tell will inspire the greatest ideas, these ideas will change our world as much as we guide the countless worlds inside our heads
the Monitors are not corrupted by the germs so much as must envision themselves as the germs to transcend their comparably more severe issues, Nix Uotan is the greatest of all monitors because he believes the most in stories, so much so that he lives among them...and therefore tells the best story in the end...the only threat that's truly existential to the DC universe is a lack of belief in their fundamental principles, the idea that to grow up one must renounce the idea that good triumphs over evil, that there can be a being that is all powerful AND all good...that a man can run faster than death itself, that we can create our own gods, dream a dream big enough to live in and fit that dream inside our heads!!
The Ultimate Age is an era i initially didn't understand in my comics journey despite intuitively separating it from The Dark Age...and i think it's not really defined by the prevailing cinematic style of art, or by the continuing deconstruction and darkness in many of the stories, but by finding a synthesis in which comics can move forward...i think Grant creates the best image of this synthesis in the merging of Ultraman and Superman, not a duality but a symmetry, and by finding a new way to exploit the recursive nature of Golden and Silver Age comics that lent them that pure thematic focus, that sense of separation from our reality, that the tyranny of Story robbed from the medium and its most popular genre leading to the work of Miller, Moore, etc. and the premature "maturation" and death of comic books (see the 90s)
because like, contrary to the belief of many, Clark Kent is not the mask, and it's not a burden to be Superman...or at least it doesn't have to be...what i really admire about Morrison is their acceptance of many takes on these characters and their desire to rectify those visions and celebrate the diversity inherent to serialized storytelling through the embrace of the Multiverse...that there is a place for Dark Shit but it should never be thought of as the Only way that superheroes can exist post the Reagan years or even as the Highest way to approach these characters
what i at first misinterpreted as a firm belief in Camp Superiority or a wish to bring back the Silver Age is actually just a mission to broaden the scope of what superheroes can be, while maintaining that no matter what any writer does, Superman (and the broader pantheon of icons) can never be killed and evil can never win as long as we keep turning the page, keep imagining a better world, keep fighting no matter how dismal the situation...only when fiction becomes chained to the limitations of reality do we lose our extremely human ability to influence that very reality with fiction...so dream on motherfuckers...TO BE CONTINUED for fucking ever!!
and that statement is truer than ever!! i've spent like a year just brushing up on all the context possible to fully understand Morrison's DC saga and this is its fulcrum point...my favorite piece of...art...ever...honest to fucking god...like, a religious experience in every sense that conveys and something i always read in one unbroken sitting, a trance state...and while i STILL don't fully understand every aspect of its brilliant construction, every single choice made and detail provided, i'm about as close as i feel i ever need to get...god comics are so fucking amazing
so...in short...what Morrison and company do here is nothing short of monumental, as a statement not just on the endurance of pop culture as meme but on the fundamental nature of fiction itself and its knotty relation to our reality...it's maybe the most vital work on the magic of serialization...and it's why these characters will never be fully captured outside of their original medium...there's simply too long a history to draw from and too much power to live up to in that cumulative effect Grant taps into here
Final Crisis is a web of time loops, taking advantage of the 4D nature of "sequential" art to make it exceedingly apparent that nothing ever ends and that is why evil will never win...what the fuck is the threat of entropy to a series of events drawn on endlessly on copied paper??...what the fuck is the bomb to Superman???...the greatest stories we tell will inspire the greatest ideas, these ideas will change our world as much as we guide the countless worlds inside our heads
the Monitors are not corrupted by the germs so much as must envision themselves as the germs to transcend their comparably more severe issues, Nix Uotan is the greatest of all monitors because he believes the most in stories, so much so that he lives among them...and therefore tells the best story in the end...the only threat that's truly existential to the DC universe is a lack of belief in their fundamental principles, the idea that to grow up one must renounce the idea that good triumphs over evil, that there can be a being that is all powerful AND all good...that a man can run faster than death itself, that we can create our own gods, dream a dream big enough to live in and fit that dream inside our heads!!
The Ultimate Age is an era i initially didn't understand in my comics journey despite intuitively separating it from The Dark Age...and i think it's not really defined by the prevailing cinematic style of art, or by the continuing deconstruction and darkness in many of the stories, but by finding a synthesis in which comics can move forward...i think Grant creates the best image of this synthesis in the merging of Ultraman and Superman, not a duality but a symmetry, and by finding a new way to exploit the recursive nature of Golden and Silver Age comics that lent them that pure thematic focus, that sense of separation from our reality, that the tyranny of Story robbed from the medium and its most popular genre leading to the work of Miller, Moore, etc. and the premature "maturation" and death of comic books (see the 90s)
because like, contrary to the belief of many, Clark Kent is not the mask, and it's not a burden to be Superman...or at least it doesn't have to be...what i really admire about Morrison is their acceptance of many takes on these characters and their desire to rectify those visions and celebrate the diversity inherent to serialized storytelling through the embrace of the Multiverse...that there is a place for Dark Shit but it should never be thought of as the Only way that superheroes can exist post the Reagan years or even as the Highest way to approach these characters
what i at first misinterpreted as a firm belief in Camp Superiority or a wish to bring back the Silver Age is actually just a mission to broaden the scope of what superheroes can be, while maintaining that no matter what any writer does, Superman (and the broader pantheon of icons) can never be killed and evil can never win as long as we keep turning the page, keep imagining a better world, keep fighting no matter how dismal the situation...only when fiction becomes chained to the limitations of reality do we lose our extremely human ability to influence that very reality with fiction...so dream on motherfuckers...TO BE CONTINUED for fucking ever!!